


the hanged man

by swordboys



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series), Fantasy High
Genre: Gen, kind of a character study with the help of some dream logic, set in fantasy high S2E17, the hanged man imagery is so.. powerful...., we love tarot symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-10
Updated: 2020-03-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:28:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23040991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swordboys/pseuds/swordboys
Summary: in the tarot,the hanged manis the card that suggests ultimate surrender, sacrifice, or being suspended in time. it depictspittura infamante, a man being hung upside-down by one ankle—the shameful image of a traitor being punished, in a manner common at the time for traitors in italy.fabian aramais seacaster dreams of the biggest sacrifice he didn't make. the betrayal he made instead.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 18





	the hanged man

**Author's Note:**

> set during S2E17, although mostly centers on events form S2E6. overall mild spoilers for fabian's arc from S2E6 to S2E15 though.  
> yes, fabian was described as having both legs and not just one tied up in E6 but, i mean. artistic license. plus, he's got a motorcycle called the hangman. we're mostly there, right?

_He is his father's son._

_He has his mother's blood._

_He is his own man._

At least, those are the words Fabian Aramais Seacaster repeats to himself over and over, again and again, lying beside the tangle of limbs of his friends in the Forest of the Nightmare King.

He wraps the words around him, asks them to hold him together, lets them lock his muscles and joints into a protective sort of paralysis. His sheet is smoother than silk, but offers little warmth. He cannot help but note the shadows flitting across the dark forest canopy above him, but his neck, frozen stiff, keeps his eyes from following those movements to the horrific sights that his imagination paints at their paths' ends.

He both wills and dreads the onset of sleep.

The instant his eyes close, however, the world falls away from underneath him, and he becomes all too aware of what is truly binding his legs straight and arms flush against his body.

He is hit with a violent rush of blood to his head. Ostensibly he is hurtling along at terminal velocity, again, headfirst—but the sensation is more akin to floating in empty space. His stomach is unmoved by either gravity or fear, his heartbeat stable. When he relives this moment, there is no desperate grasping for lifelines. He knows he will survive.

There is peace in his plummet. It is not the fall that scares him.

Even then on the Leviathan, he had chosen falling as an escape; and this time he knows to savor the seconds until the sudden snap of the ropes bite into his body and pull taut around his ankles. The whiplash cracks its lancing path down his neck and spine.

He gets a single moment of respite before the words flung down all the way from the top of Crow's Nest catch up to him.

_That's no captain that abandons his crew._

His mouth is dry. He is sure that his eyes are still closed in the darkness, but the world written on the back of his eyelids starts to glow orange as an infernal heat approaches his suspended form. There could be any one of seventeen or twenty pairs of undead eyes in front of him, most of which he would not even recognize. But he is fairly certain he will be able to identify the face staring back into his.

He scrunches his eyes even more tightly closed. He wonders what he looks like right now, what he must have looked like to his friends when they found him: strung up and small, already wrapped in a chrysalis of sheets.

_You ain't no pirate and Bill would spit in yer eye._

He could open them. Gaze upon the embers framed in a face as young as his own, but even more angular; try to ignore how the skull craters inwards on the upper left side, not think about where the bone is missing entirely from the back.

_Captain, why?_

His head tingles with the excess blood pooling in his upper body and some liquid, warm, trickles down his face. He exhales. He has been returned to the time and place of this nadir, but he knows he has put himself back together.

He opens his eyes and Alistair Ash's gaze burns into his.

_Come back to kill me a third time, have you?_

Fabian's voice fails him. Alistair seems to receive the gist of his thoughts, however.

 _That's my name._ His voice has the same reedy quality to it, but his grin stretches a little wider than Fabian remembers being possible. His bright red skin is almost translucent—the fire underneath blazes hotter and brighter than ever, barely contained.

_Captain Seacaster had a bit more trouble with this second body, I suppose. Two thousand gold pieces can only get you so far._

Fabian feels the awful softness inside him shudder with shame, the awful softness that Bill Seacaster's form in Hell makes it all too clear he had cut out of his once-human body long ago.

Alistair moves a step back, his head tilted to the left as he considers Fabian inverted, his silver hair loose and hanging downwards. Fabian notes that Alistair's neck and wrists are now mostly unadorned. He is little more than skin, and his horns seem proportionally longer than before. Still, a boy. A child.

 _You think you've made a martyr of yourself then?_ Alistair circles back, closer. _You think you're a new man?_

He feels the hilt of Fandrangor in his right, and the Sword of Seacaster in his left.

It is hard to read his once-expressive face, but Fabian can at least still hear the bitter amusement in his voice. _I died for you, Seacaster. Fabian._

As did the others, nameless to him. And it is and is not his fault, is absolutely his fault but there is not nearly enough time in the world for him to repent and move onto the next conquest. Even in death, Bill Seacaster drags the finish line ever further away.

He thinks to offer his guilt up to Alistair and the whole entourage of ghosts that follow him and are yet to come. But then he thinks of Bill's own crew that grows ever larger, a shambling group that dies for and because of their captain over and over again. He has spent too long licking his wounds, he has to wake up, and his sword and sword by another name itch in his hands. He has come from sword, he thinks, to sword.

 _The same, then. You never change._ A harsh laugh escapes Alistair, an unfamiliar sound from his lips. Fabian can not, will not, read into it. _Won't you take me for a dance instead, next time? I think I burn hotter than some fire elemental._

Fabian recoils and shuts his eyes. He cuts himself free. There is another fall, this one short; and then he picks himself back up.

When he is relaxing at his home years later, surrounded by his many spoils of battles past, he will look back and laugh.

Yes. Just a footnote lining the pages and pages of his exploits. That is all this will amount to.

_He is his father's son._

_He has his mother's blood._

_He is his own man._

When he awakes into another nightmare, possessed, he still finds himself reaching for that tricorner hat. And when he awakes into the world again, trapped under net and the weight of an impossibly heavy axe, he wishes to lie there just a little longer.

**Author's Note:**

> could be a little ashcaster if you squint but we all know fabian is too repressed rn... anyway, truly just written because i am sad that fabian just killed alistair in the afterlife without apologizing (in a more serious way), or anything, again. i love him but just think hes tired of performing all the time. r i p.
> 
> thanks for reading! feel free to find me at [my tumblr](https://aureliansgalley.tumblr.com/).


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